Friday, March 11, 2011

They are really good and worth a listen if you like folk music at all.

Which you should.

I especially like the third song.

I've been super MIA from this blog. I've been spending my days working my normal job and then heading straight to the shop to work on getting ready for the opening (TOMORROW) grabbing a beer with friends and then going home to fall into bed. In short; super busy. I've also been reading Jane Eyre. I read on the train and it's the one part of the day that I don't obsess about the shop. I think it's really been helping me stay sane. Well, sort of sane.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

March is the month that I will be opening a shop with my good friend Irina. A real store. double yikes.

We have been planning for the past three months (this is part of why the blogging around here has been a bit scarce) and now the opening is almost here! Here's the deal.

Our shop is called:

If you've been reading the blog for a while you might know that I've been an assistant for my lovely friend Siri, over at her shop Treehouse, for the past year. Siri loves her sweet little shop (and so does everyone in the neighborhood) but she's also ready to take a quick break and it just so happens that Irina and I are ready to have a shop... So we are opening a pop-up shop for three months while Siri goes touring with her awesome band and works on her beautiful jewelry line and cool stuff like that! Siri wrote a great newsletter which you can see here.

And while Siri is off having her adventures, Irina and I will be here in Brooklyn tending to our store-within-a-store. Few & Far Between will feature beautiful vintage apparel and home goods alongside hand crafted jewelry and accessories by some of our favorite independent designers.

I am so excited. This is a total dream come true for me and I can't wait to show you some photos of the shop as we start to move our huge vintage collection in and get everything styled and lovely. Want to see some sneak-peeks?

One last thing for now; the big opening party is going to be on March 12th! If you live nearby you should mark your calendar. If you don't live nearby, tell a friend. I'll have more information coming soon so stay tuned!

Friday, February 4, 2011

Yesterday morning as I was heading out the door to go to work I realized I had a problem: I only had 5 pages left in the book I was reading, no small knitting projects in progress, and and hour long subway commute each way.... I'm just not the kind of person who can ride the subway for more than a couple stops without anything to do. It makes me nuts.

So I opened a drawer and grabbed two balls of yarn that looked okay together and seemed to be about the same weight; a ball of handspun from the Union Square Farmer's market in dusty blue and some Noro in greys and blues and browns. I crammed a size 6 circular needle in my purse and ran out the door.

Two long subway rides, one short subway ride, plus some downtime at work and I had a finished hat by last night.

It's just a simple kid's cap. I cast on 70, did 1x1 rib for and inch, then alternated 4 rows of the blue with 2 rows of the Noro, decreasing after about 5 inches. Easy and cute. So cute, in fact, that I'm now making one for myself with the same ball of Noro and some tan handspun from the same farm. I love alternating the self-striping Noro with a solid, it's fun and creates a really pretty effect. I wonder if I could get away with doing something like that for a cardigan for myself... would it look too dorky? Would I care? Some things for me to think about...

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Here's a nice little headband for keeping your ears warm on days you don't want to wear a hat. It is secured in the back with a button which is nice because you won't mess up your hair pulling a headband down and you get to use one of those cute buttons you've been saving.

Seed Stitch Headband

You Will Need:

-Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick (Less than half a ball) or 4 strands of any worsted weight yarn held together

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

This past week I've been super interested in quick projects. I'm talking like less than 2 hours... or even less than 1 hour. And that's how this new Seed Stitch Headband was born. And I've already made six of them...

I'm hoping to have the pattern up later this week. It's just way too overcast this morning to take any decent modeled photos. Irina and I were actually planning to do a little photo shoot this morning for a couple of different projects but we had to cancel because it's so dark out. Boo hoo, oh well.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

I'm just popping in to share a super quick pattern with you all. It's almost too simple and silly to be called a pattern. it's more of just loose guidelines... But first, a quick story:

Anyway, yesterday I picked up my That Girl cardigan after letting it sit untouched since September. I decided to make it long sleeve, did some calculations, checked my gauge, measured things, wrote things down. I was being a very responsible knitter. I knit the sleeve one way and then decided to go for a different look. I ripped back, recalculated and started again doing special decreases of my own design. But things didn't look quite right. I wondered, "Why does the sleeve look so wide?"

I counted the stitches and discovered that there were 64 stitches on the needles and not the 54 that I wanted. What tripped me up?.... Subtraction.

I had told myself over and over in my head that 76 minus 12 is 54. boo hoo.

So that project is currently hiding in a heap under the bed waiting for a day when I feel more confident in my basic math skills.

But I despite my lack of brain power (I blame the cold) I did want to make something yesterday and feel productive. I picked up a pair of huge size 17 needles and a ball of Lon Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Oatmeal. You may have noticed I use this yarn a lot. I just like it. It's big and affordable and you can put it in the washing machine. Good things.

I started knitting and within 3 episodes of Seinfeld I had these:

Here's how they are made:

Cast on 16 stitches on size 17 needles with a super bulky yarn (or you can hold four strands of worsted weight together).

Knit garter stitch until the piece is 12 inches long.

Bind off.

Sew the cast-on edge to the bind-off edge.

Weave in the ends and you're done! You made something in less than 2 hours!

And I have to say that I did feel a lot better after I finished knitting these. Like, okay, I don't know how to subtract 12 from 76... but at least I can make something to keep my ankles warm.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Hello.I'm home sick today. Here are the things I'm thinking about doing:

I started knitting this sweater soooo long ago. I'd love to get it finished in time to get some wear out of it. The problem is that I think I made some adjustments to the pattern and I'm not sure if I wrote them down anywhere.... Also, I just can't seem to decide if I want it to be short sleeve (as the pattern is written) or long sleeve. Long sleeve will take longer but I think I would wear it more.

I also should get started on this pile of vintage dresses to be mended. Some of them are mine and some are for the secret project. And now that I think of it there are actually more dresses in need of mending in the craft room... yikes.

The third one from the bottom is a gorgeous dress from the 60's that I was wearing last night and I sneezed so hard that a little section of the zipper ripped out. haha.

I'm also reading Love in the Time of Cholera for the third time and listening to First Aid Kit's album The Big Black & the Blue for the hundredth time and absolutely loving both.

It's snowing like crazy here. On a clear day you'd see the Empire State Building in the distance. Not today.

Friday, January 21, 2011

I'm loving this video of the blizzard we had in New York a couple weeks ago. It wasn't a super crazy blizzard but the video is still really beautiful time-lapse.

I'm going to Connecticut tomorrow to do some stuff for the big project I'm working on. So exciting! I'm hoping to get some knitting done in the car so maybe I'll have something interesting to show you tomorrow night.

Monday, January 17, 2011

The other day my friend Irina and I were doing some clothes shopping for a big project we are working on. It's a project I'm excited to tell you about soon... Anyway, one of the dresses I found that day was made of this beautiful woven linen in rich jewel tones. I grabbed it and carried it over to Irina and whispered*, "Look. I found one that's 100% linen!"

She replied, "What's linen?"

And I paused for a second and then said, "Well, it's made of flax and it's uhh... like, really nice..."

Yeah, not super eloquent. I was so happy to stumble on this video today on reMade USA's blog.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Remember that swatch I showed you? It's for a new project that I'm feeling excited about. My very first stranded colorwork project! Is it intarsia? Umm, I'll have to check the definition. Anyway, the project is a pair of gloves from the winter 2010 edition of Spin-Off magazine called, simply, Norwegian-Inspired Gloves by Erda Kappeler. I couldn't find it on Ravelry to give you a link but I might scan in a photo from the magazine just to show you what I'm working towards. Here's where I'm at so far:

I'm changing a couple of things: The pattern is for gloves but I'm going to try to change them into mittens. I just think handknit gloves in anything heavier than sock yarn look really bulky. Like big monster fingers. And secondly, I'm changing one of the charts. The original pattern has a chart on the back of the hand for (what I think is) a rooster and I'm doing a deer chart instead. I might do a different animal on the other hand. We'll see.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

First I decided to swatch for some new mittens using some scraps of worsted weight yarn. Some is Cascade 220 and some is some random thrift store wool. It looked like this:

The project I'm planning for is knit in the round. To get a more accurate swatch I knit across then loosely brought the yarn back to the right hand side of the right side of the knitting... Uhh. Does that make any sense? It's a way of swatching in which you are knitting a flat stockinette swatch but you only do knit stitches (no purls) as if you were knitting in the round. The back of the swatch ends up looking like this:

After knitting on that swatch for a little while I went out with Logan to walk around in the snow storm. We went out around midnight. I was snowing fairly hard but it wasn't too cold out and the night was beautiful. I realized as I was walking that I was wearing 6 hand-knit items... Really! My socks, cardigan, hat, mittens, shawl, and scarf were all hand knit by me. Logan was wearing a scarf from me as well.... Wow, a lot of hand knit stuff. When I finally came in from the cold I looked like this:

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Still here. It's been taking me a while to get back to reality after a big break from work and a great trip back home.

And you know what else? I realized the other night, while discussing the holidays with a friend, that I knit about ten gift this year. I feel really good about that. But you know what I feel slightly less good about? I didn't take a photo of a single one! Seriously, not one. And that's a big part of why there's been silence here on the blog. Oh well...

I think I'm going to start another Brambles Beret today. The one I made in the fall (or was it the summer?) went to my sweet friend Berit. No photo, of course.

Also, while I was in Minneapolis I saw the photos of Alec Soth at the Walker Museum. Have you heard of him. I really like his work but one photo in particular has been stuck in my mind. Maybe you'll like it to: